Technical action, like all human action, cannot exist without taking on a symbolic form. One can neither conceive nor use a technique without having a mental representation of it. That is why the sociology of techniques needs to pay particular attention to the study of the imaginaire: a combination of utopia and ideology which affords a way of constructing a collective identity, of breaking away from existing models, and thus of legitimizing new techniques and mobilizing the different actors concerned. If we want to associate imagination and technical action in our analysis, we need to study first the authors then the addressees of discourse on techniques. The former may be designers, early users or critics. Their discourse may or may not be intended for persons involved in the technical process, such as engineers, decision-makers and especially users. This article draws on the example of the Internet in such a study.